Media Solutions Overview
Rapidly Changing Industry
The media industry is undergoing a historic transformation. Companies are introducing a myriad of new content delivery services at an unprecedented rate. TV, smartphone, and tablet technologies are improving rapidly as devices proliferate, along with advances in connectivity at faster bandwidth speeds. Social media capabilities are changing the way we organize into communities and communicate with one another. Audiences are fragmenting as people modify their viewing behavior in response to new services and platform options. As a result, programmers and advertisers are searching to compete in a marketplace drastically different from that of just a few years ago.
Alex
When one of the world’s leading advertising agencies faced the challenge of finding a better solution for the labor-intensive process of allocating commercial inventory across a broad array of media on behalf of its clients, they turned to MSA Media. Leveraging our domain, analytics, and solution development experience, we developed ALEX®, a cloud-based embedded analytics engine capable of rapidly allocating and optimizing millions of ad sales dollars across multiple types of media including national broadcast, national cable, and syndication. By employing an agile development methodology, we were able to deliver the first production iteration of ALEX to the client in just fifteen weeks.
Features
- Enables clients to easily upload Goals and Inventory files from other systems
- Provides users with a simple user interface to customize the allocations based on advertiser preferences
- Incorporates third party data sources such as Nielsen-Catalina to better align commercial placement with consumer buying behavior
- Can be run quickly — within minutes — providing the agency planning teams with immediate feedback
- Provides pre- and post-allocation reports showing improvements in audience lift
Benefits
- Automates a historically manual process, dramatically reducing allocation times
- Increases audience delivery per advertising dollar
- Provides reports indicating improvement in allocation results
- Enables staff to spend more time performing “what-if” scenarios
- Improves turnaround time for submitting allocations to media companies thereby reducing potential inventory conflicts
Dynamic Scheduler
The Dynamic Scheduler provides real-time scheduling of Programs, Episodes, and Deals within Gabriel®. This enables networks to optimize their use of their inventory while managing the complexities of overlapping selling titles and an array of advertiser constraints impacting how and where commercials can be aired.
The Dynamic Scheduler will soon be available as a stand-alone module able to integrate with third party Traffic and Billing systems and can be adapted to solve a broad array of media-related scheduling challenges.
Features
- Provides real-time scheduling of commercial spots and immediate feedback to the Programming, Sales, and Commercial Operations
- Enables the synchronization of programs, selling titles, and deals
- Automates and eliminates many historically labor intensive operations
- Modular architecture enables clients to expand and contract computing capacity to correspond with scheduling volumes and launching additional networks
Benefits
- Allows network to better manage perishable inventory and increase their profitability
- Enables Sales and Commercial Operations to respond quickly to the constant stream of programming and deal changes
- Identify and track units from pre-order to post-air reconciliation
- Enables clients to configure the Dynamic Scheduler to meet their evolving business needs
- Can work as an integrated component of Gabriel® or a stand-alone module capable of interfacing with third party Ad Sales, Traffic, and Billing systems
@media EDI Services
Our EDI service bureau solution enables clients to communicate efficiently and effectively with their trading partners. Our work with leading media companies and participation on the TECC Committee, in industry meetings and forums, has enabled us to influence the direction and shape of electronic commerce and remain on the forefront of EDI capabilities.
Our @media® Deal application consolidates files from legacy, proprietary proposal systems, and spreadsheets, to create an industry standard electronic contract.
The @media Share website allows trading partners to access any invoice, contract, or pre/post log data, processed through our service bureau. Agencies can obtain a consolidated view of deals and invoices across all @media clients. The @media Share website also enables clients to transmit data such as proposals, files for multi-platform business, and related business documents, to their trading partners.
Features
- Translation, validation, and secure transmission of deal/contract and invoice files using industry supported and proprietary formats
- A thorough audit trail of all transmissions
- Supports the television, radio, and advertising industries
- Client service team staffed with professionals knowledgeable in TECC, X12 , and industry business practices
- Support for deal changes
Benefits
- Provides a comprehensive, cost-effective EDI solution
- Decreases turn-around time for payment
- Proactively identifies data issues and reduces costly mistakes
- Adapts to evolving business rules and industry standards
- Eliminates the need for in-house expertise or additional MIS staff
Embedded Analytics
Using Embedded Analytic Solutions to Enhance ROI
In this constantly shifting media landscape, clients turn to MSA Media for help in addressing their strategic business challenges. Our goal is to bring embedded analytics to bear on our clients’ growing sea of disparate and unstructured data, changing business relationships, and the increase in competitive outlets, in order to help them identify actionable intelligence, automate business operations, and provide a strong foundation for future growth. We are leveraging the benefits of cloud-based computing to reduce the time required to deliver value to clients, lower costs, take advantage of new component technologies, and lessen device dependencies.Data management is key to our advantage in this process. No matter how much analysis is performed, data that is not properly managed or correctly integrated leads to either incorrect or misleading results. MSA has a deep wealth of domain knowledge and analytic capabilities that underpin our solutions to our clients’ challenges. These solutions are then provided to the clients through both embedded analytic solutions and need-specific service bureaus.
Our embedded analytics solutions address both strategic analysis and just-in-time solutions to perishable inventory for the following areas:
- Audience Segmentation
- Behavior and Attitudinal Targeting
- Audience Forecasting
- Planning and Buying Systems
- Deal or Order Management
- Brand Allocation Optimization
- Workflow Automation
- Commercial and Promotions Scheduling
- Stewardship and Post Buy Reporting
- EDI Exchange
EyeMax
EyeMax® maximizes client revenue by analyzing each deal’s audience delivery and automatically adjusting unit placement just prior to air, while continuing to respect advertisers’ constraints. EyeMax provides a comprehensive report of pre- and post-move placements documenting increased revenue.
Features
- EyeMax automatically adjusts unit placement on the log closer to airtime to:
– Maximize audience delivery for under-delivering deals
– Minimize delivery for over-delivering deals - Allows for more effective allocation of ADUs (audience deficiency units) for under-delivering deals
- Transform Recapturable units back to sellable inventory
- Delivers results in minutes
Benefits
- Increased profitability by improved use of inventory
- Improves audience delivery
- Reduction of manual log editing
- Can work as an integrated component of Gabriel® or a stand-alone module capable of interfacing with third party Ad Sales, Traffic, and Billing systems
Gabriel
Gabriel® – An Enterprise Solution For The National Cable Industry
In the early 90’s, we developed and implemented Gabriel®, the first Ad Sales, Traffic, and Billing solution designed specifically for the national cable industry. MSA worked closely with cable network partners through every stage of Gabriel’s design and development.
Gabriel has gone on to become the leading software system for the cable network industry.
At the heart of the Gabriel system are a dynamic scheduler, a series of departmental modules, a relational database which work together to schedule inventory, automate workflow, and streamline business operations.
Features
Gabriel provides a robust suite of modules addressing the full range of cable network business needs including:
- Audience Forecasting
- Programming
- Research
- Sales Management
- Proposal Development
- Deal Maintenance
- Traffic
- Accounting
- Stewardship
- EDI
- Post Buy
Benefits
- Increased profitability through the ability to respond quickly and efficiently to business changes and improve inventory utilization
- An integrated database and system-wide integration of business processes
- Unit serialization and Inventory Management capabilities that enable Sales and Commercial Operations organizations to accurately determine capacity, sellout thresholds, and inventory reserves
- Real time scheduling of deals, including advertiser, deal, and unit level constraints
- Ability to track units from proposal through final reconciliation and transfer via EDI
- Ability to fine-tune business rules and system behavior without costly modifications
Post Buy Service
In the early 80s, our Post Buy Service played a critical role in helping legitimize the national cable industry as this nascent industry struggled to attract a larger portion of advertising budgets. Today, we provide reports to nearly every cable network, as well as other media inventory aggregators.
Our history of managing the post buy process provides a deep understanding of the complexities and nuances of the audience measurement data, master data management, and reporting needs. We have a proven track record of revising our services to incorporate new reporting methodologies and audience metrics. Our Post Buy Service provided a strong foundation of industry domain knowledge enabling us to launch many other products and services.
Features
- Reconciliation of commercials to audience data for reporting and stewarding
- A customizable posting process to meet clients’ methodology requirements
- Industry proven reports of reconciled data and audience data
- Internal analytical reports focusing on advertiser/agency/deal level information
- Research focused reports answering questions regarding demographics, sources, and dayparts
- Ability to provide Nielsen© and other audience data for Stewardship software
Benefits
- Provides independent verification of audience delivery
- Provides media buyers and sellers with a consistent means of measuring audience delivery
- Ability to quickly adapt to evolving industry standards and posting methodologies
Prospect
The foundation of a media plan involves the development of a reasonably accurate audience forecast. Because deals can span six-to-eighteen months and includes many unknowns (future news events, competitors’ program schedules, evolving trends, etc.), audience forecasting represents a formidable challenge.
Audience forecasting has historically been a combination of art and science, with the emphasis on the former. With improved audience forecasts, agencies and networks can avoid the significant churn associated with reassigning inventory, modifying deals, and reacting to a host of other business challenges that detract from the core goal of efficiently reaching the advertisers’ targeted audiences.
We have developed analytical software systems addressing many of audience forecasting’s most challenging issues and allowing our clients to significantly streamline their business operations.
Features
- Provides a robust modeled forecasting approach both for upfront and nearer-term estimates
- Analyze causes and drivers of exceptions and trend breaks
- Allow for more timely revisions to forecasts based on audience data
- Provides a baseline Competitive Benchmark capability for comparing in-house networks to others
- Enables clients to establish thresholds for determining when a deviation from the baseline is noteworthy (size and time)
- Futures: Scenario Management Tool, Monte Carlo Style Simulation Engine, and incorporation of Viewer Segmentation Data
Benefits
- Reduced forecast error relative to current ad hoc methods
- More timely analysis of actuals vs. trends enabling clients to better adjust commercial placements, reduce waste, and reduce liability
- Account for more factors in audience forecasts (Pops, PUTs, competition, non-linear viewing, audience trends, etc.)
- Ability to determine if forecast deviations are meaningful or due to common audience volatility
- Ability to evaluate multiple “what-if” scenarios by varying model parameters
- Provides a framework for evaluating causes of unexpected audience changes
- Can work as an integrated component of Gabriel® or a stand-alone module capable of interfacing with third party Ad Sales, Traffic, and Billing systems
Stewardship
MSA’s Stewardship application forecasts over- and under-delivery for specific deals/contracts or an entire network and recommends the number and placement of ADUs (audience deficiency units) for each deal. Stewardship plays a critical role in a network’s ability to accurately forecast revenue and determine liability risk, meet its contractual demands, and meet their clients’ goals.
Features
- Offers a variety of projection methods for a network to estimate the delivery of future commercials
- Allows clients to fine-tune projections by applying factors to projection methodologies
- Forecasts over- and under-delivery for specific deals/contracts or an entire network
- Recommends the number and placement of ADUs for each deal within the flight
- Allows removal of recap units making them available for resale to other clients
Benefits
- Allows networks to better manage perishable inventory increasing profitability
- Provides improved method of forecasting remaining liability and evaluating delivery strategies
- Enables networks to provide better service to their clients
- Can work as an integrated component of Gabriel® or a standalone module capable of interfacing with third party Ad Sales, Traffic, and Billing systems